The MCU's New Era Owes Everything to HBO’s Best 6-Season Dramedy

Published Aug 23, 2026, 1:58 PM EDT Thomas Butt is a senior writer. An avid film connoisseur, Thomas actively logs his film consumption on Letterboxd and vows to connect with many more cinephiles through the platform. He is immensely passionate about the work of Martin Scorsese, John Ford, and Albert Brooks. His work can be read on Collider and Taste of Cinema. He also writes for his own blog, The Empty Theater, on Substack. He is also a big fan of courtroom dramas and DVD commentary tracks. For Thomas, movie theaters are a second home. A native of Wakefield, MA, he is often found scrolling through the scheduled programming on Turner Classic Movies and making more room for his physical media collection. Thomas habitually increases his watchlist and jumps down a YouTube rabbit hole of archived interviews with directors and actors. He is inspired to write about film to uphold the medium's artistic value and to express his undying love for the art form. Thomas looks to cinema as an outlet to better understand the world, human emotions, and himself. At the recent D23 Expo, a convention hosted by the Walt Disney Company for the company's upcoming projects, the long-awaited cast of the new X-Men movie was revealed. Now under the control of Kevin Feige and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the beloved Marvel Comics superhero team promises to be the new faces of the expanded cinematic saga. The cast announcement, which featured the likes of Sadie Sink, Samara Weaving, and Inde Navarrette, may have sounded familiar to certain fans of an HBO coming-of-age dramedy from the 2010s. Christopher Abbott as Charles Xavier and Adam Driver as Mr. Sinister? Is this the new X-Men or a Girls reunion? It turns out the true farm system of the current MCU, which also features Girls alum Ebon Moss-Bachrach as The Fantastic Four's Ben Grimm, is not its vast library of comics, but rather the cast of breakout stars from Lena Dunham's generationally formative series, which she created, directed, and starred in. In more ways than one, Girls has endured as a cultural object. 'Girls' Featured Breakout Performances by Christopher Abbott, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Adam Driver Per the show's title, the primary showcase of Girls, which follows the lives of twentysomething post-grads struggling to get by and figure out their purpose in New York City, is its group of female characters: Hannah Horvath (Dunham), Marnie Michaels (Allison Williams), Jessa Johansson (Jemima Kirke), and Shoshanna Shapiro (Zosia Mamet). The show's initial millennial audience wasn't the only demographic that embraced the series as a calling card for the perils of aimlessness and frustration among young people. Dunham's show, both absurdly humorous and deeply poignant, allowed women to take the mantle of the usual male-led raunchy sex comedy while also studying the complexities of feminism. However, Girls also gave its actors worthwhile roles that helped launch the likes of Abbott, Moss-Bachrach, and Driver —three current staples of film and television. They each play the on-and-off-again romantic interests of the main characters, with the former two dating Marnie and the latter dating Hannah. Upon their introduction, they are immediately stripped of their "nice guy" affectation, a quality most coming-of-age shows created by men would excuse, even if they express unscrupulous behavior. Between Adam's alcoholism and Desi's drug addiction, the characters' dark sides are treated as self-destructive woes that signal the gender double standard, as the women's own struggles are regularly dismissed by their respective boyfriends. Driver, in particular, was a major revelation among the cast of Girls. One of our most renowned and gifted actors working today, Driver's energy is unlike any other, which has made him such a coveted star for directors like Noah Baumbach, Martin Scorsese, and Spike Lee. His performance as the aloof and arty musician was perfectly dialed into the show's offbeat comedic sensibilities, representing the new kind of alpha who can deceive the most innocent single people seeking a relationship. 'Girls' Is an Evergreen Reflection of the Struggles of Being in Your 20s For any post-grad in their twenties, watching Girls is like looking in the mirror. Despite creating something so personal and idiosyncratic, Dunham captured the universal feeling shared by everyone working a dead-end job and stabilizing their personal lives during this uncomfortable period. Whether it's toxic relationships or waning career dreams, life is unforgiving for the characters in Girls, but Dunham encourages us to laugh at the misery while simultaneously taking a solemn look at what we put our next generation through. You're not always going to like Hannah, Marnie, and the group on a personal level. In fact, the show relishes the exercise of crafting unlikable characters, but it requires you to respect their circumstances and sympathize with their plights. Even though they've reached full adulthood, anyone who has lived an average experience knows that twentysomethings are not ready for what comes ahead. Girls leans into the anarchic spirit of this fragile period, balancing hilarious gross-out gags and storylines with the sensitive emotional ruminations of trying to be a functional person — a formula mastered by the show's executive producer, Judd Apatow. Dunham's farcical and tender coming-of-age dramedy shattered every stereotype of women in TV shows, as they didn't need to be helpless romantic partners to the wacky and outlandish male leads or unblemished saints. A show that's timeless and influential, Girls' impact has now extended to the Marvel Cinematic Universe's casting department. Girls Release Date 2012 - 2017-00-00